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Introduction to Marilyn Buck’s “Incommunicado”: Dispatches From a Political Prisoner

In introducing Marilyn Buck’s Incommunicado: Dispatches from a Political Prisoner, Willmott notes that less than one hour after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a number of political prisoners throughout the U.S. were abruptly rounded up and taken into solitary confinement. This segues into Buck’s poem, which is in part a distillation of her own experience of being held incommunicado during the period; and her reflections on the importance of never surrendering one’s voice, of not giving in to his or her fears, become increasingly important in this Orwellian time, when people are living under a shadow government and being silenced under the “Patriot Act.” The poet’s voice reminds us, from the other side of the razor wire, of the importance of continuing to speak out and act against injustice at a time when the state is demanding consensus and criminalizing dissent.

political prisoners, political dissent, literary criticism, poetry

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 30, No. 2 (2003): 102-104